ANT347 Lecture 6.pdf

Presentations: Damascas + Mexico City
Lecture 6
February-11-14
12:20 PM
Agenda:
- Essay grading criteria * see rubric posted on portal
- Agentive forms of resistance
- Forms of Violence
- Politics of representation
- Gender dynamics (into next class)
Research Paper
- Evidence supporting, quality
- Quality of arguments
- Depth of analysis
- Remember! Urban Anthropology essay
- Connect to the city, and ways in which people live in cities
- Organization, style,
- How well you craft argument
- Writing style
- How you use quotations
○ Look at how you integrate quotations
○ Intro quote - insert - analyze it
- 12 pages; 3000 words
- About 10-20 sources
- Argument - how this has come to be?
Agentive forms of resistance
- Pervasive, often invisible
- Bourgois - how structure and agency demonstrated in the book
- Resist marginalization, can be destructive
- Underground economy - pure financial necessity, (state of economy), because of ways they are perceived by the people who work in
mainstream economy jobs, sexism, discrimination, search for respect
- Allows them to make money, (min wage), work without losing respect
- Clothes / dress and how one positions themselves/ stature
- Wardrobe - men and the women ; worry about their clothes are appropriate for workplace, take great pride in the outfits they put
together
- Phys appearance
- Street clothes of office, and street clothes to look 'fly'
- Humiliation - tacky, not looking appropriate
- Article Bourgois wrote in 1996: 250-251
○ "At the same time that street culture represents a creative response to exclusion by creating new forums for dignity, it also
guarantees exclusion by requiring its participants to be semiliterate, expressively aggressive, unexploitable, and enmeshed in
substance abuse and violence"
- "Weapons of the weak" (James Scott's 2nd book)
○ Concept developed by James Scott, poli sci,
○ He was interested in the way people resisted dominance
○ In his first book ; Argue that there has been way too much focus on peasant life
○ Research in S/E Asian, why peasants rebel (mostly Vietnam and China?)
○ Peasants werent rebelling originally, subsistence
○ People who had more looked out for people who had less
○ He called this 'moral order of the village economy'
○ Shaped the behaviors and actions of the community
○ When system broke down, elites ignore their duties, and do not look after their fellows, peasants will rebel
○ Political economy of the village
○ He argues that it doesn’t happen that often
○ Smaller acts of resistance
 "weapons of the weak"
 Forms of everyday resistance not overt, not observable
 Forms of cultural resistance, and non-cooperation
 e.g. lying, faint ignorance, slender, jokes about Boss, sabotage,
Regain power and satisfaction, agency for yourself

 Those who feel unfairly ruled over or dominated
 Happens in a variety of work places, even we have prob done something like this
 Exercise political agency
 Can be symbolic
 Avoid? Direct confrontation of authority
 People with agency have dignity
 Bourgois talks about Weapons of the Weak in chapter 5
- Argues that this has a lower success rate / less satisfying than it was in the past
- In terms of purposeful actions against leader/boss, can sometimes have positive results, like confrontations,
- Less likely and less common in jobs Primo, Caesar are in
- People in the book still engage examples
- Such as:
 Primo's boss did not want him to answer the phone, because she thought he had a heavy Puerto Rican accent
which can scare the customers
(in response to his Boss not wanting him to talk on the phone, he would specifically and emphasize the fact that
Term 2 lectures Page 1 (in response to his Boss not wanting him to talk on the phone, he would specifically and emphasize the fact that
angers his boss...like roll his R's and speak more heavily in that accent)
- Page 166
○ Bourgois talks about how Primo and Caesar lash out on other ethnic groups in the neighborhoods - like Mexicans
○ They were stealing their jobs
○ Scape-goating (blaming another victim for their actions)
○ Own structural vulnerability
○ Oppositional defiance
- Page. 131
○ Bourgois, Primo and Caesar talking to someone who has a job
○ Bourgois challenge him - he hasn't been there for long, and has a good job… while Primo who has been there for so long and has
not been able to find a decent job … the guy then points out racist comments
○ Reframing of negativity that is encountered
- All of these acts of agency opens to self-destruction, and internalized racism
- Internalized racism
○ e.g. Caesar is called stupid by the mexican man
○ Turns to street culture
○ Embrace of this culture is self-destructive (and destructive to others)
○ e.g. drug addicts, destructive for community,
○ Signif